DISCOVERING MY ERIN ROOTS
By Tom Johnston, kgold@istar.ca
Published in the Erin Advocate
How do you find out about your ancestors? Everybody has them, everybody has them in
equal numbers. One could argue that if we go far enough back, everybody shares the
same ancestors to one degree or another. In fact, I have recently found out that I share
some of mine with some of you living in Erin Township.
I have nine ancestors buried in Erin area cemeteries. My family now lives in the heart
of Toronto but our roots are buried deep into Erin Township. At least four
great-great-grandparents homesteaded in Erin in the 1830's. Archibald Johnston and
his wife, Sarah McLellan, on concession 8, lot 16, and Lachland McLean and his wife,
Margaret Leitch, on concession 9, lot 21.
Now I understand this kind of pedigree is not unusual in the Erin area. There are several
century farms including two Leitch farms still going strong. Many area residents can
claim area pioneers as their ancestors. The difference is I have only recently come to
know of my pioneer roots thanks to the Wellington County Museum and Archives and,
strangely enough, the Erin Advocate.
My father is 72, healthy and successful with five children and eight grandchildren. But
his father Ronald Lorne Johnston died when my dad was only four so he has no real
memory of him. The pressures and the dramas of a widow raising two boys in the
depression took precedence over keeping track of family lore and somewhere along the
line his mother lost the family photo albums. My father doesn't even know what his
father looked like. So I have embarked on a quest to find out about the "Erin
Johnstones".
Last summer my dad and I visited his father's grave in Erin's Union cemetery. Ronald
Lorne lies in a family plot with his father, Ronald Johnstone, and his mother, Janet
McLean. The monument supplied me with accurate death dates and gave me an idea.
The Erin Advocate has been publishing since 1880. Did it publish obituaries? Were any
papers from back then still around, and could I find them? The answers were yes, a few,
and yes.
Enter the Wellington County Historical Society. For a mere twelve dollars an hour,
Karen Wagner was kind enough to blitzkrieg through her records supplying us with a
treasure trove of genealogical information: county marriage records, Erin Township
census reports and township land abstracts, cemetery locations complete with
inscriptions, photocopies of a few pages of C. J. McMillan's "Early History of the
Township of Erin" and, while there were no photos, there were two obituaries from the
Advocate.
No matter how many dates an archivist supplies you with they are only the bones of the
story, the family's skeleton stripped of the flesh of life. Most of the time the mere cold
dates are all we have: Janet McLean, my great-grandmother, was born on November 3,
1850 and married on October 29, 1869. The dates cannot supply the human component
which is everything in life. They cannot tell me who these people were or what drove
them beyond the struggle just to survive, they cannot tell me the stories of their loves
and losses or what brought them across the cold, cold sea from Scotland.
But in this case the archivist was well-aided by the Erin Advocate, still publishing after
nearly 120 years. The Advocate of March 8, 1911 told me that Janet McLean, the
granddaughter of John, who was one of the first farmers in Erin Township, died of a heart
attack in her 61st year. She died while trying to telephone for help. The obituary listed
her sisters and her children, one of whom was named Ronald Lorne Johnston but, like
me, was called Tom.
Janet McLean was born on her family farm on concession 9, lot 21 in 1850. Her mother,
Margaret Leitch, spoke only Gaelic and her father, Lachland, acted as a Gaelic
translator for the courts. By the time she was 18, Janet had met a farmer, Ronald
Johnston, who was born down the road on concession 8, lot 16.
Her husband, my great-grandfather, died 15 years later at the age of 84. His Advocate
obituary fleshed him out stating that he had been an invalid for several years. There
were no old-age homes then so Ronald was cared for by his daughter for the rest of his
life. The obit tells me my great-grandfather was a Presbyterian, though I believe at one
time he was a member of the Disciple church in Erin. It also told me the old man was a
Liberal, which proves political ideology is in no way genetic.
Assumptions now fill out the rest of their lives for me. I can imagine a young Janet
McLean and an eager Ronald Johnston together for buggy rides, long walks, church
socials and large family dinners before agreeing to marry in October of 1869. It would
seem they had a good life, raising five children. I believe all of them survived childhood,
which, after poking through area cemeteries, seems a miracle. Then, after two
generations of backbreaking pioneer farming, the "homestead" was sold and the family
packed up and left for Toronto. What was the drama? Why did they move? What
excitements or sorrows did the family feel as they boarded the train and left the farm for
the "city"? The answers to these questions may not alter the course of history. Janet
and Ronald were just one family among many, but to my family, they were great people,
so thanks to the Advocate for taking care with their obituaries.
It is too bad I didn't start this quest earlier. According to the Archives, there was a first
cousin named Dorothy Baird. You may remember her as a telephone switchboard
operator who spent her entire life in Erin, dying just 17 years ago. She may have been
able to answer a lot of questions and even provide a photo or two.
This past spring, I drove my father, my nine year old son and my nephew back to Erin.
We searched for and found the graves of eight great, and great-great grandparents. Just
after lunchtime we dropped into "Forever Timeless", a building that used to be "How's
General Store". My grandfather was a customer, so were his parents, his grandparents
and his great-grandparents, right back to the store's founding in 1835. My son, Parker,
and my nephew, Shane, tried on the tricorn hats and the straw Stetsons. C. J.
McMillan's "Early History of the Township of Erin" says my great-great grandmother,
Margaret Leitch, a woman who spoke only Gaelic, used to bring her butter and eggs to
"How's" to trade for tea and sugar and that she'd have her husband, Lachland McLean,
speak for her because, "he had the English". While the children cavorted in front of the
mirrors in the old-fashioned hats, I ran my hand along the store's counter where so many
of my family did business when those hats were still in fashion.
So thanks to the pioneers: the McLeans, Milloys, Leitches, McLellans and Johnstones.
Hello, it's nice to meet you after all these years. And thanks to the "Wellington County
Museum and Archives" and the Erin Advocate for helping to make the introductions.
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Erin Roots: Part Two (Scotland)
This is a story about my Scottish roots... about a farmhouse on top of a hill in Kintyre,
Scotland from which, on a clear day, you can see nine islands in the sea and the coast of
Northern Ireland. Also, if you look hard enough and remember well enough, you can just catch
the outline of new life and new hope across the sea in Erin, Ontario. This story is also about
how I learned not to be embarrassed in pubs when my father shakes salt into his Guinness.
Not that he drinks a lot. But I'd forgotten about the salt until a recent trip we took together to
Scotland. It's an old Toronto beer hall habit he tells me. It doesn't really change the taste of
the beer, it's just a habit. And judging from the puzzled looks on the faces of a long series of
helpful Scottish barkeeps, it's a particularly Canadian habit.
My father's name is Maurice Johnston. His father, Ronald Lorne Johnston, a third generation
Erinite, was born and raised on a farm on Concession 8, Lot 16 in 1878. Ronald grew up
learning to speak Gaelic, plant and plough with a horse, bale hay, make cider, smoke meat,
hunt and fish, and all the other wonderful and necessary things pioneer kids had to learn to do
in the Erin of the 19th century. In the end, farming became too boring, or perhaps too difficult,
and Grandpa Ronald opted for the exciting world of high technology. He left the farm and
became a telegrapher for the Canadian National Railway.
My father grew up hearing second and sometimes third-hand information about his family's
pioneer days in Erin. Grandpa Ronald (known as Tom for some unknown reason) died in Toronto
when Dad was just four years old. Much of his history died with him. Dad doesn't even have a
photo of his father. But after years of digging through census records and surfing the net, Dad
and I have managed to glean a little information about his Erin family and we've met a number
of interesting people, both living and dead, along the way.
For example, there is a pair of graves in the Erin Pioneer cemetery that memorializes two
very important people in my family. The stones read John McLean and Flora Milloy and they
are at the end of a path that had its beginning in the hills of Kintyre, Argyllshire, Scotland. In
1831, John and Flora and their eight children left their tiny village of Glen Barr, Killean
Kilchenzie parish. They sailed across the Atlantic and settled on a farm on Concession 9, Lot
21 in Erin.
Now, I'm not really sure how many descendants of John and Flora are still living in the Erin
area. I'm sure there are a few (they should call me), but during the last few years of
researching my family tree I've come across several interesting descendants who have lived
there and elsewhere over the years. One of their sons, Archibald Mclean, left Erin for the U.S.
in the 1860s where he enlisted with the Union forces in the civil war. One of their
grandsons, another Archibald McLean, was a rascal indulging in a bigamous relationship that
was only discovered, by both of his widows, after his death. ( I should check out the
Advocate's archives for that story). One of John and Flora's great-grandsons, William John
McLean, went to the Berlin Olympics in 1936 as a judge. One of their great-granddaughters,
Doris Kassowan, was a deputy sheriff in North Dakota in the 1940s. And one of their
great-great-great-grandsons, perhaps the least interesting, is a television journalist and an
amateur genealogist. Me.
This last June, my 72-year-old father and I found ourselves hiking up the remote Glen Barr
(read valley of the Barr Water) about 60 kilometres north of Campbelltown, on the west side
of Scotland's Kintyre peninsula. It was a three-hour hike from the nearest house, to the
remains of Stockadill croft. John McLean was born here in 1784, 47 years before he sailed
across the sea to Erin. The walls of the old house now stand only shoulder high; the thatch
roof is gone, but not the view.
The house is perched on the side of a south facing hill. The walls are dry quartzite stone
chipped and piled with some skill. They are about 18 inches thick. Standing inside what was
once the bedroom window of the two-room ruined house, one can see through a constant rain
across the Barr Water to the other side of the glen. The hills are dotted with some of the
three thousand or so sheep that wander over the current farm. More than two hundred years
ago, this broken house was a working, thriving family centre. When my John McLean was
born, his family was in the midst of a life-changing transition from basic subsistence
farming Ü vegetables grown inside a stone fenced plot, milk cows and brown trout from one of
the three small deep locks behind the hill at the back of the house Ü to sheep herding. For a
small rent, usually some mixture of limestone blocks, labour rendered, lumber, or woven
cloth, John's family had lived well enough to survive and grow. But just after he was born the
landlord, one Colonel Charles Campbell who sublet vast estates from the Duke of Argyll,
changed the way rent was paid from the easily attainable commodities to cold hard cash.
Charles wanted the tenants gone so he could raise sheep instead of just more tenants. This
woolly economic axe was far more effective than the swords of King George the Third in
quieting the rebellious north. Sheep were one of the more insidious ways in which the
highlands were "cleared" of small farmers. Sheep were more profitable than extended families
of tenants. It was harder for farmers to get silver pennies than two tons of quarried
limestone, or a barrel of kippered fish. Ironically, John would live to see this same Charles
Campbell bankrupted by high living.
Glen Barr cuts almost halfway across the Kintyre peninsula. Only a few families still live
there, all of them sheep farmers to one extent or another. My father and I stayed there in the
glen's almost palatial "Arnicle House". It's a bed and breakfast, and restaurants for lunch and
dinner are scarce in the area. Our host, Elma MacArthur, came to the rescue.
"Why not try North Beack More. It's just a short distance away, small, but the food's fine." Dad
and I climbed into the car and he navigated while I drove. This situation in and of itself
requires both parties to possess the patience of saints. Especially me.
The North Beack More restaurant is a neatly kept white-washed croft, the only building on a
high windy hill. It has several additions built onto its original, 400-year-old, structure. A
satellite dish is mounted on the stone wall, a testament not so much to modernism as to the
lack of other t.v. reception. The restaurant is in what was once a barn but now converted into
a simple, comfortable dining room that looks out on nine of the Isles of the Hebrides and, on a
clear day, Northern Ireland.
While Dad examined the menu, I saw the name of the restaurant at the top of the page. While
the locals pronounced it "North Beack More" it was spelled "North Beachmore". That name
triggered a memory. I excused myself and walked outside through the wind and back to the car
for my family tree records. When I returned Dad was charming the owner and sprinkling a dash
of salt into his Guinness. The somewhat puzzled woman was taking his order looking askance
at the salt cellar. I showed her my files.
"Yes, that's how we're spelled ,'North Beachmore'. It's a Gaelic name you see. Beach,
pronounced as Beack means 'beast' and More means 'great' or 'big'. The name means 'Great
Beast' Ü that's the wind you see. It never really stops blowing here."
"My great-great-great-grandmother, Florence Milloy, was born here in this building in 1787", I
replied, showing her my parish records. She was as delightfully surprised as I. Looking at a
photocopy of an old map, we both noticed that the 'North Beachmore' croft was just a short
five-mile walk over a hill, down into a glen and then up another hill to the ruins of Stockadill.
It was just an hour's stroll, as the shepherd walks, from young Flora Milloy's home to young
John McLean's. Their well-worn path is long grown over though. The owners insisted that Dad
and I tour the renovated croft, "just so you can see we're taking care of the old place". They
certainly are.
I walked back out to the car and put my records away. A magnificent sunset was beginning.
The great wind blew across the Atlantic from Newfoundland and smashed into my face. When I
returned to the warmth and hospitality of what was once my great-great-great-great
grandfather's barn, there were two pints of Guinness on the table and my dad was shaking salt
into his. He and I talked about the wonder of coincidence, we talked about how hard life must
have been for our ancestors here on the windy hills and about how both Flora Milloy and John
McLean must have stood here gazing out across the Atlantic dreaming of their new home in
Erin. We spoke too of us, about how much life had changed for him over the years, about how
well he remembered his father even though he was only four when my grandfather died. Dad
told me he still can't believe that I, his eldest son, am almost fifty, nearly the age his father
was when he died. His eyes grew moist for a moment.
There would be other discoveries on this trip. Other sites seen and other people met; family
ties encountered and ancestral Castles toured. But on reflection I learned more about my
father that evening than I did about all my forefathers and mothers during the entire trip.
While I still can't quite bring myself to salt my ale, I don't mind so much now when my dad
does. It's not a sacrilege, it's just an old habit.